Art Is Not Useless

It’s just crammed in the wrong box

At Yale, Harold Bloom’s students would randomly shout line numbers from Paradise Lost, and he would recite them from memory.

Bloom loved the Western Canon. Still, he said that art is not “useful.” Attempting to sum it up into tidy moral lessons or, God forbid “takeaways” is to diminish and misunderstand it.

Hell yeah, brother. When we ask the question, “Is art useful?” we’re already on the wrong track. We’re trying to cram art into a box it doesn’t belong.

I’m reminded of Elon Musk posting on X about listening to the Iliad at 1.25x speed. I mean, I’m glad he’s listening (and audio is definitely the best way to experience it), but The Iliad is not Atomic Habits; you’re not meant to hurry to the key takeaways: “Top 10 Lesson from The Iliad: #7 Don’t Get Shot in Your Heel.”

Elon Musk, at least, takes it on faith that the staples of the Western Canon are important. He hasn’t descended to the debased materialism of Sam Bankman-Fried, who said that Shakespeare being the greatest writer of all time was mathematically unlikely.

Literature is not software. Updates do not make the old versions irrelevant. Art does not function that way — it has different rules altogether. The Iliad is important because it is wondrous.